N.Korea says Plutonium "Weaponized" and Off-Limits

N.Korea says Plutonium "Weaponized" and Off-Limits

www.reuters.com

North Korea says it has "weaponized" enough plutonium for four to five nuclear weapons, a U.S. expert said on Saturday after talks in Pyongyang.

North Korea has made a series of demands as well as offers of cooperation over its nuclear program as U.S. President-elect Barack Obama prepares to enter the White House.

(visit the link for the full news article)


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Just Great!

Is this just a game to them?

What is it, about once a year the world has to hear what N. Korea is doing to obtain nuclear weapons, then we have to hear what WE have to do (or if you prefer, PAY!) to get them to stop building a nuclear weapon!

So, we make an agreement with them, they get what they want, then they just got to keep pushing.

Harrison said senior North Korean officials had told him this week that 30.8 kg (68 pounds) of plutonium their government had listed as part of a preliminary disarmament agreement had been "weaponized" -- incorporated into warheards or other arms.

And what IS it going to cost us this time?

Harrison said North Korea wanted construction of two unfinished light-water nuclear energy reactors in return for dismantling its Yongbyon nuclear plant.

This is just a game to them!

And I guess, in their book, they are winning!

"So they've raised the bar and said 'We are a nuclear weapons state now. Deal with us on that basis'," Harrison said.

www.reuters.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

[edit on 1/17/2009 by Keyhole]

I am calling their bluff.

They are more poor and disorganized right now then they've been in years. I just read an article that says we don't even know for sure if Kim Jong Il is alive or leading right now.

Originally posted by xstealth
I am calling their bluff.

They are more poor and disorganized right now then they've been in years. I just read an article that says we don't even know for sure if Kim Jong Il is alive or leading right now.

He is either dead or in a coma,had a stroke i think,N.Koreas excuse for him not being around is they dont want to show him in a weakened state.

reply to post by Solomons


He had a stroke, according to the article at least.

N.Korea says plutonium "weaponized" and off-limits

The North's leader Kim Jong-il appears to have given up handling many day-to-day tasks after suffering a stroke and this may explain the North's hardening stance, Selig Harrison, a scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, a policy institute in Washington D.C., said.

All sorts of threats have come out from North Korea over the years and yet that country leaders have never acted on them . IMO the Bush admin lost a golden opportunity to put pressure on North Korea allies to cut off the aid lines that are keeping the regime in power . An complete economic blockade would bring about the down fall of the North Korean regime which is arguable worse then Saddam Iraq .

The U.S.A. doesn't negotiate with terrorists.

.

We can all thank that "great statesman" jimmy carter for starting the process of appeasement that has directly led to this situation.

It's funny that we chose Iraq out of the three "axis of evil" nations to attack. It couldn't perhaps be because they were the weakest of the three, could it?

The mighty United States of America pounds it's chest in "victory" when it defeats a weak foe, but when faced with a well-armed enemy in North Korea, it is more than willing to play the diplomatic, go-world-peace! role.

The United States, despite what it says, stops short of attacking nations that truly do possess weapons of mass destruction. North Korea is calling the bluff. They are embarrassing the United States.

"Hans Brix? Ohhhh no!"

Jokes aside...great news. Just freaking fantastic. Let the world burn.

Originally posted by xpert11
All sorts of threats have come out from North Korea over the years and yet that country leaders have never acted on them .

As they are normally threats made in response to US threats. To this day the US refuses to sign any form of peace treaty , the Korean war has never really ended, with North Korea so why shouldn't they be scared to death and exhaust every effort to get their hands on nuclear weapons?

news.bbc.co.uk...

IMO the Bush admin lost a golden opportunity to put pressure on North Korea allies to cut off the aid lines that are keeping the regime in power .

When you starve the people they have no power left to fight their government so they don't and you don't make any progress. This is why the US/Israeli and other imperial governments insists on starving the populations of various nations; who would they pretend to be fighting if they didn't keep dictators/tyrants in power?

An complete economic blockade would bring about the down fall of the North Korean regime which is arguable worse then Saddam Iraq .

The difference being that North Koreans had a say in the election of their initial leader with constant threats form the US preventing that nomimal democracy from going anywhere good. A complete economic blockade will , like in Iraq, kill children by the hundreds of thousands and do little else.

The US government have all the power to solve the continuing problems on the Korean penisula but since it likes having a excuse to spend vast sums on making the military industrial , intelligence complex richer and stronger ( and sometimes get some weapons out of the deal) problems are not being resolved and lives are not improved.

Stellar

Originally posted by ALLis0NE
The U.S.A. doesn't negotiate with terrorists.

The US national security state loves terrorism and will pay them handsomely and protect them as best they can as long as it's terrorism under the direction of US national security state aims. This is why the US government is the only one that has ever been convicted of state terrorism by the UN; some feat given how the US basically controls that organization.

There are more terrorist living in florida ( Cubans who works/worked for the CIA in it's efforts to destroy the Cuban revolution and state) than in Iran and North Korea and probably also in Iraq before the US invasion. As for the rest of oft talked about terrorist it's funding of the resistance against the occupation of Afghanistan ( the USSR did not invade as they were asked in to aid in the fight against US backed rebel forces) created much of the problem's in that region of the world. It's support of Zionist imperialism in the middle east created much of the rest and as in ages past it's strill true that empires create violent resistance by their own immoral and inhuman exploits.

Originally posted by centurion1211
We can all thank that "great statesman" jimmy carter for starting the process of appeasement that has directly led to this situation.

What appeasement? The US national security state well understands that China will again intervene if resumes it's aggression against the Korean people ( yes, all of them). They also understand that they are in far worse position strategically than they were back in the fifties and that there isn't today the possibility of resorting to nuclear weaponry which did not manage to deter a Chinese intervention in the fifties.

Despite all this the Us government refuses to sign a proper peace treaty with North-Korea thus forcing them to further bankrupt themselves to prevent the possibility of becoming a second Iraq.

Stellar

[edit on 19-1-2009 by StellarX]

StellarX you don't suppose that South Korea has any say in a formal peace treaty with North Korea ?
Did it occur to you that in reality North Korea isnt interested in a peace treaty because it would go against all the things that regime has brainwashed the local population into believing ?

The people of North Korea have been starving for at least a decade . The only thing the North Korean regime feeds is its military . Starve out the military and the regime is finished .There has never been any elections in North Korea stop spewing revisionist BS history . If Truman or even Ike had the balls there could have been a unified Korea . Sure a wider war wasn't needed but it is also true that the Korean War ended in a ridicules stale mate . North Korea was and would be the aggressor so much for the much vaunted imperialism .

Sure the US and South Korea could invade North Korea but there fifty years to late just the coalition was a ten years to late taking out Saddam .

reply to post by StellarX




Appeasement - as in telling NK that if they are good little commies and promise not to do anything bad like build nukes, we'll be happy to give them a whole bunch of really nice stuff. Hell, we'll even give the nice stuff first because old jimmy carter has a real soft spot in his (lusting) heart for NK.

It's in the history books, but not the revisionist versions some around here like to read ...



[edit on 1/19/2009 by centurion1211]

I thought you may like to see this. Its just been reported on the Press TV news site. It takes a while for the video to play.

Link at the top of page www.presstv.ir/reports.aspx?sectionid=3510301

Looks like everyone is playing there cards before the 22nd to see what happens.

Originally posted by NovusOrdoMundi
It's funny that we chose Iraq out of the three "axis of evil" nations to attack. It couldn't perhaps be because they were the weakest of the three, could it?

The mighty United States of America pounds it's chest in "victory" when it defeats a weak foe, but when faced with a well-armed enemy in North Korea, it is more than willing to play the diplomatic, go-world-peace! role.

The United States, despite what it says, stops short of attacking nations that truly do possess weapons of mass destruction. North Korea is calling the bluff. They are embarrassing the United States.

Iraq was chosen because of its oil and its refinery capabilities. North Korea does not have oil and Iran does not have enough refineries to covert their own oil. Iraq was the logical choice if you and you gonns in the White House wanted to get filthy rich quickly.

[edit on 19/1/09 by Pfeil]

Oh and this was post number 4000; if you keep up this nonsense 10 000 isn't only a qeustion of time but not even much of it!

Originally posted by xpert11
StellarX you don't suppose that South Korea has any say in a formal peace treaty with North Korea ?

Sure they do and they are well able to defend themselves from anything the North Koreans can throw at them any ways. That is obviously if they care to live in partitioned country to start with which i suppose is probably not case after a half century of US sponsored separate development.

Did it occur to you that in reality North Korea isnt interested in a peace treaty because it would go against all the things that regime has brainwashed the local population into believing ?

No, such rubbish have never occurred to me given how starving people always want peace. If the US stopped intervening a settlement would be reached sooner or later.

The people of North Korea have been starving for at least a decade . The only thing the North Korean regime feeds is its military .

Actually the military has been working the fields most of the last two decades with military warehouses having been openened and exhausted a long time ago. You might believe all the stories about supposedly fanatical North Korean citizens as norm but last i checked that's what fanatics believes about the rest of the world.

Starve out the military and the regime is finished .There has never been any elections in North Korea stop spewing revisionist BS history .

You can not starve a country's military without starving it's people; it killed half a million Iraqi' kids and it's probably killed many more North Koreans without a settlement in sight. The only thing clear from advocating such a course of action is who the real fanatic is in this discussion. As for elections yes, South Koreans finally got something approaching that not long ago and North Koreans, not surprisingly, never had much recourse to picking their most senior leaders even if they did favor the first.

As for never holding elections Nortk Korea holds them every five years. If you wish to argue that they are not representative or something like that i would obviously agree.

If Truman or even Ike had the balls there could have been a unified Korea .

China would not have allowed it and the US would have turned itself into a total pariah state if it used nuclear weapons against China to recross the 38' th parallel. Ike did suggest something like that but the American public decided that he was completely mad and Truman got him replaced soon after.

As for there not being unified Korea there would have been if the US allowed elections which would have favored then 'president' of the North. Since the US realised that he would win the decided that there would not be elections and thus not only kicked off the Korean war but created a half century of division and strife.

Sure a wider war wasn't needed but it is also true that the Korean War ended in a ridicules stale mate . North Korea was and would be the aggressor so much for the much vaunted imperialism .

South Korea invaded North Korea on that fateful day ( but there were rather large skirmishes for at least a year before) so it wasn't a question of the South Korean leadership being innocent , they had hundreds of South Koreans locked up for and proceeded to execute them en mass when the war broke out, but a question of them not having support and thus losing the war pretty fast.

The US government were fully responsible for this war as they were responsible for not allowing the type of elections they could and would lose thus essentially encouraging Koreans ( north and south) to rise up and overthrow the same type of imperialism they had just defeated in the second world war.

Sure the US and South Korea could invade North Korea but there fifty years to late just the coalition was a ten years to late taking out Saddam .

But what did North Korean and Iraq ever do to the US other than try to set independent economic and political courses? In the case oF SH he followed US orders for the first two decades and only the 'fall' of the USSR encouraged the US to find a new temporary enemy ( one that was setting a very bad example with free health care, very good higher education, religious freedom and women's rights ) to use all their new conventional weaponry ( Reagan buildup) on.

If the US stayed out and stopped putting pressure on North Korea it's economy might still have been as much better as the South's as it was in the 60's and 70's when only Japan had a higher standard of living in South East Asia.

So much for crazy North Korean and Iraqi leaders who manage such high standards of living ( if not much in the realm of political freedom) until the are stopped in their tracks by western economic or military predation.

Stellar

[edit on 19-1-2009 by StellarX]

Originally posted by centurion1211

Appeasement - as in telling NK that if they are good little commies and promise not to do anything bad like build nukes, we'll be happy to give them a whole bunch of really nice stuff.

They are adament that the nukes are for self defense and i for one believe them given how the US did invade Iraq ( on trumped up charges) but not North Korea who have obviously killed tens of thousands more Americans than Iraq ever did.

The US national security state is not in the business of appeasing those i does not want to and it did not and will not start with North Korea. If it gives it's chosen, but almost always, innocent victims anything it's to make them sufficiently strong to provide sufficient pretext for invasion or at least inaction thus perpetuating the military industrial intelligence complex.

Hell, we'll even give the nice stuff first because old jimmy carter has a real soft spot in his (lusting) heart for NK.

I don't know why the worse informed people tend to hate Jimmy Carter most. What did he do, other than nothing, to get you so worked up?

It's in the history books, but not the revisionist versions some around here like to read ...

It isn't in the history books but how you would know , not having read any, i have no idea. Maybe you could tell me which book you get those nonsense from so i can show that you should you shouldn't believing everything you read and or learn to read properly?

/me shakes head.

Stellar

Sorry, but I think people are hypocrits.
Everytime I get on ATS, I hear about how the U.S always gets in everyones buisness, and needs to stay out.
Ohbut when something serious happens between two countries, the first people they call, is the U.S.
its really quite pathetic.
The U.S. isthe police force of the world, and everytime someone has a problem, they pick up the phone and dial 911instead of handling it on their own.
People from around the world bash the united states, that is, until they need our help. Thats when they start waving the U.S flag like they are proud to be our buddies.
PATHETIC.
But regardless of how ignorant people can be, we still do what we can, whether people like it or not.
This whole N.Korea and S. Korea thing has nothing to do with the U.S...
cept for the fact that we are allies with S.Korea...even so...we get dragged into it, just by being their friends. If we do something, we are badmouthed. If we dont do something, we are bad mouthed.
We are always in the no win situation....If only other nations could put themselves in our shoes they might understand.

(on a side note)....When it comes to Nucleor weapons...I think that the only people who should be able to have them are U.S..China..Russia, and Britian.
Isreal proved to me they shouldnt be allowed to have em, Iran Definately shouldnt have them....North Korea shouldnt have them either.

And we should do everything we can in order to make sure they dont have them, whether people like it or not.




[edit on 19-1-2009 by Common Good]

StellarX here example of North Korea approach to dealing with aspects of feeding its population . North Korea isnt interested in any political the fact that they closed the only rail link between the two countries and do everything they can to prevent people from heading to South Korea . North Korea leaders have brainwashed the locals into thinking that all there problems are the fault of the US and South Korea .

Truman fired MacArthur not Ike . Ike was elected president and sat in the Oval Office after Truman .
South Korea invaded North Korea ?
Thou out the Cold War the North Korean was depended upon on aid from the Soviet Union and China . After the Cold War ended so did the economic aid and as a result North Korea economy crumbled . North Korea self imposed isolation policy's in an age where access to overseas markets is crucial have proven to be economic suicide . None of this is the US fault .

Your attempted to smear the US is pathetic .